


the long goodbye

by whiplash



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Major Illness, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 10:25:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15386730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiplash/pseuds/whiplash
Summary: "Wyatt and me, we made it our mission to hunt him down. We tracked him through the Cumberland pass, nearly freezing to death... then I got sick. Real sick."So, I meant to write some quick Wyatt&Doc hurt/comfort... but ended up writing a 3k angsty Wyatt back-story featuring sick!Doc and a lot of snow.





	the long goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> So, 3k of Wyatt and Doc... not quite sure how that happened. 
> 
> (Who am I kidding? I know exactly how that happened. Broken best friends are like crack to me. The only surprise is how it ended up being more about Wyatt than Doc.)
> 
> As a side note: Urilla was Wyatt Earp's first wife who, according to Wikipedia, died in her early twenties of typhoid fever. And because that wasn't sad enough, she was pregnant with their baby at the time. Wyatt Earp reportedly went off the deep end for a bit after that, stealing horses and what not. Being a horrible person, I totally used that as part of his backstory.

_“In Dodge City, there was a school teacher, name of Sally. She laughed like a mule, but her eyes did shine. I was sweet on her, but she went missing. Wyatt and me, we tracked her to a limestone cave in the hills. That’s where we found her, with three other soiled doves that had thought to have run off.”_

xxx

They find her. They find them all.

Wyatt drags his friend out of the cave, out of the darkness and out under the bright winter sky. The air’s fresh and sweet, and the sun warms their skin as Doc staggers to a grove of young birches to empty his belly. At the sound of Doc retching and coughing, his horse, a pretty brown mare, neighs. Wyatt hushes the beast, even as he swallows back the bile rising in his own throat. He swallows, and swallows, and swallows again as he stands guard over his friend and stares out over the frozen hills, one hand resting on his holster and the other clenched into a fist inside his glove.

He’s not an overly religious man, and he doesn’t truly believe that good and evil walks the earth. Isn’t all that sure, most of the time, that the good Lord even listens to the prayers of men. He surely hasn’t made it a habit to listen to Wyatt, not even on the darkest of dark nights; the one which Wyatt had spent praying and pleading and bartering; the one which Urilla had spent on her deathbed, delirious with fever, her sweet face twisted, and her belly swollen with their unborn child. No, He hadn’t listened then, and Wyatt doesn’t much imagine that He’ll listen now either.

But Sally had carried a dainty little cross around her neck and gone to church each Sunday, so Wyatt does the right thing, swiping his hat off his head and bending his neck as he mumbles a prayer.

A prayer for the dead, and then another for those left behind to grieve.

xxx

_“He had taken their insides out. Spread them around their own bodies like a Thanksgiving feast.“_

xxx

“Here,” Doc mutters, passing him the bottle.

The whiskey burns going down, bringing tears to Wyatt’s eyes.

It’s a welcome feeling, a cleansing of sorts, and he doesn’t bother wiping them away. There’s no one here to see him but Doc anyway, Doc and maybe the ghosts of those girls, so ghastly displayed in the cave behind them. As Wyatt blinks away the tears, he finds that he can see them still; ravaged not just by man, but time and critters too. Their innards splayed out around them, gnawed on by foxes and rats. To think that each broken body had been someone’s little girl, someone’s precious new-born babe…

He shudders and takes another gulp of whiskey, indulges in one last moment of heartbreak before turning back to his friend. The man’s still pale, and his hand shakes as he reaches for his bottle. Wyatt hands it back without comment, turning his attention to their surroundings as a way to stay by his friend’s side while still giving him the privacy to mourn.

Doc had been sweet on Sally, equally taken by her booming laugh and her glittering eyes. She’d been a school teacher, reportedly with a whole shelf of books in her bedroom, and she’d called Doc _‘John Henry’_ as they spoke about their favourite authors. It had been strange, seeing that other side of Holliday. To see the man who’d gone to school to learn French and Latin and then graduated dentistry school at such a young age that they’d refused to hand him his certificate until he’d reached his twenty-first birthday. Strange, but amusing too, and even sort of sweet. In another life, Doc would have stayed John Henry, would have never left Georgia, would have started his own dental practice and married some bright and clever girl. Someone like Sally.

Pushing it all out of his mind – the dead girls, Doc’s palpable grief, and the many roads not taken – Wyatt starts sorting through the information available to him. The location of the cave, the nearby roads and the local farms. The girls, and their varying state of decay. He makes a list of all their unanswered questions, and then a list of all the things they need to get done.

He makes a promise then, on those hills, to Sally and to Doc as well as to those other girls and their grieving parents, that he’ll see this murdering devil dead. Whether at the end of a rope or the end of a gun, he doesn’t particularly care.

xxx

_“Paper called him ‘The Jack of Knives’ on account of the fact that’s what he called himself in the letters he sent, taunting them… Wyatt and me, we made it our mission to hunt him down.”_

xxx

In town, there’s a note waiting for them.

It’s addressed to Doc, who reads it out loud in a thin voice.

“’You can be sure to hear from me again. Until then, I shall be sure to keep my knife sharp and ready. Yours truly, Jack of Knives.’”

Doc hands him the slip of paper and Wyatt skims through the roughly shaped letters, grimacing at the ugly phrasing as much as at the red stain in the bottom corner.

“He’s not an educated man,” he eventually says. “Look at his spelling.”

“I wouldn’t be so generous as to call him a man,” Doc replies, reaching into his pocket for his tin of cigarettes. His hands, they’re shaking again. Or, Wyatt acknowledges, it might just be that they’re shaking still.

There’s been no rest since they found the bodies, and while Doc makes it easy to forget, the man’s unwell. More so than he looks, and surely more so than he acts. And so it’s there, right on the tip of Wyatt’s tongue, the suggestion that they take the evening to rest, to fill their stomachs and to sleep on their plans of revenge. Yes, it’s right there, burning hot with the need to be spoken out loud, when one single grim look from Doc quells the fire.

“I’ll see this bastard dead,” he vows, an unknowing match to the promise that Wyatt’s already made.

And, with that, the hunt’s on.

xxx

_“We tracked him through the Cumberland pass, nearly freezing to death…”_

xxx

As darkness falls, they have no choice but to set camp.

Wyatt makes the fire and starts the business of getting them both fed for the evening while Doc sees to the horses. The pine trees loom over them, and the sun has long since disappeared behind the mountains. Even squatting right next to the fire, keeping a careful eye on the kettle, Wyatt still feels the cold and the wind, right through his duster.

Times like these, he tends to find himself dreaming of a more civilized life – one where he spends his evenings in a warm home, with a set table and dry boots – and tonight’s no different. But as soon as Doc comes over, Wyatt rouses himself from his fanciful fantasies and shifts, making room for the other man. Doc’s brought their bedrolls and an armful of mostly dry branches which they feed to the crackling fire as they warm their hands and wait for their evening meal.

It’s not like them, the silence that fills the camp that evening, but the way that Wyatt sees it, there’s not all that much to say which hasn’t already been said. Sally and them other girls are still dead, slaughtered and gutted like rabbits. Jack still has a hell of a head start on them, and he seems to slip further and further away for each day. The weather’s still bad and worsening by the hour. As for Doc, well, their hunt has left the man exhausted and wheezing at the slightest of efforts, and to the poor man’s chagrin he keeps them both awake at night with his coughing.

The food’s warm and filling though, and it’ll surely keep them going for another day. One had to try to focus on that sort of things instead.

Wyatt scrapes his bowl clean and goes back for more while Doc’s still poking at his food, pushing the beans around and chewing dubiously on the salted pork. The urge comes, as it always does, to scold the man, to berate him like a mother would her child, but it hasn’t worked before, and it’s fair to assume that it won’t help now either. So instead, Wyatt bites his tongue and finishes his second bowl. There’s no sense, after all, in letting good food go to waste.

“You go first,” Doc finally says, gesturing towards the bedrolls with his half-empty bowl. “I’ll finish this, and keep the fire going. Might collect some more wood too. I imagine we’re in for a long and cold night.”

One in a row of many, he doesn’t say, but it’s more than implied by the dryness of his voice.

“Imagine you’re right,” Wyatt agrees. “And if you want first shift, it’s all yours. But I need to stretch my legs some first, so I’ll get that wood for us and see to the horses. And you best wrap yourself up in a blanket and shift closer to that fire, less you fancy losing a couple of fingers.”

“Might finally give you a chance to win at cards,” Doc counters, offering a small smile, one which doesn’t hold a candle to the real thing but still warms Wyatt in a way that the fire hasn’t. He carries that tiny spark of warmth with him as he goes, the wind whipping at his face and blowing snow in under his collar.

Back at camp, he then lays out the bedroll and crawls into it, boots and all, making sure that Peacekeeper’s near at hand. The gun’s a gift from Doc, but there’s more to it than that. The way it fits in his hand, the way it answers to his touch. It’s special, and he’d hate to lose it. Besides, Jack’s out there somewhere, as close to evil untainted as Wyatt’s ever seen.

Being ready for all hell to break loose, well, it only makes sense.

xxx

_“…then I got sick. Real sick.”_

xxx

A couple of days later, he wakes, not to Doc’s hand on his shoulder, but to the morning sun.

The fire’s still smoking, tiny embers glowing under a cover of ashes. The horses move restlessly, as hungry and cold as their masters. The sky’s white, threatening more snow before midday. Wyatt looks around, confusion warring with irritation as he searches for his friend. Then both give way to fear because there’s Doc, right by the fire where Wyatt had last seen him, only he’s not boiling water for their breakfast, or even stoking the damned thing back to life. No, Doc lays slumped in the snow, his face slack and blood on his lips.

Wyatt’s no stranger to death, or loss, or grief. But it’s been a damned long time since it gripped him like this; the sudden sense that the world’s tilting, leaving his belly rolling and his limbs weak. But he tucks that away, tucks it all away, as he scrambles free and half-stumbles, half-crawls across the frozen ground to his friend’s side.

“Doc,” he calls, “damn you, Holliday, don’t you do this to me, don’t you dare-“

There’s no answer, but that doesn’t matter because there’s a pulse, and a faint rattle as Doc’s chest rises and falls. There’s the tiniest flutter of eyelids as Wyatt taps at his friend’s face, and there’s a hint of a whine as Wyatt drags him over to the still-warm bedroll.

There’s hope, and it’s not the first time that Wyatt’s made do with that.

xxx

In town, the doctor takes one look at Doc before shaking his head.

Wyatt insists though, one hand on Peacekeeper and the other offering a substantial amount of coin, and for one reason or another, they soon find themselves set up in a tidy but spartan bedroom. Doc, half-awake now, makes for a better patient than Wyatt would have imagined, dutifully swallowing syrupy medicine off a spoon and inhaling hot steam through a tube, even letting them plaster his chest with foul-smelling concoctions. All of it he bears with a sort of stoic countenance as Wyatt does his best not to fret or wear a trench through the floor with his pacing.

For all of Doc’s uncharacteristic compliance, and Wyatt’s equally unparalleled patience, the fever keeps raging, and the cough doesn’t get better. It tears at Wyatt, having to watch his best friend slip away from him like this. Helplessness doesn’t suit him, he’s been told that more than once, and as he haunts Doc’s sickroom like he had once haunted Urilla’s, he comes to suppose that it must be true. And Doc, damn the man’s intuition, must see it. All of Wyatt’s fears and frustrations, he must be able to read them on his face, just like he reads all them tells at the poker table.

“You should get going,” he rasps, late at night. “Can’t afford to lose him.”

For a moment, Wyatt doesn’t understand. Jack hasn’t been much on his mind, not since he woke to find Doc half-dead, not since he started this slow and painful vigil.

“You think I’d go?” he asks as soon as the meaning dawns on him, indignation colouring his voice, rising it well above what’s appropriate in a sickroom. “That I’d leave you to die, here, all alone?”

Doc grins then, blood on his teeth and fever in his eyes.

“I think we all die alone,” he breathes. “And I think you’re a good man, Wyatt Earp. I think you’ll go if I ask it of you. If I tell you, that I can’t bear for Jack to get away. Or for you to see me like this.“

There’s a quiet sort of desperation in his voice, in his eyes and his every gesture, has been for a while now, but it grows stronger than ever now as he pleads for Wyatt to leave.

“You remember me as a strong man,” he continues. “Not like this. Wyatt, _please._ ”

He can’t recall ever hearing Doc beg before, not even with a gun to his head. So, once again Wyatt does the right thing, and swipes off his hat and bows his head and says his goodbye.

xxx

No sooner is he out the front door though, staring out at the street of busy people, then he turns right back into the house. He’s promised to catch Jack, and he will. He’s promised to remember Doc as a strong man, and he will do that too. The strongest and best of them all, he swears that he will. But he’ll be damned if he just leaves. Someone should be there, to watch Doc’s back, to bear witness to his passing and make sure that he gets a decent burial. Someone should be there, at the funeral, and someone should stand there, at the grave.

So, dropping his bedroll on the floor, Wyatt sits down on a chair outside Doc’s bedroom door. He sits there, listening to the coughing and waiting for it to end, for Doc to slip away from him just like Urilla had, and even though there’s no more hope this time than it had been back then Wyatt barters and pleads and prays just the same.

“Good Lord,” he says, in the quiet of his own mind as Doc coughs and gasps and retches, “spare this man, and I’ll be yours, I’ll be your soldier, I’ll be your weapon, I’ll do your work, just spare him. _Spare him._ ”

xxx

Come dawn, the fever’s broken and Doc’s still with them.

“He’ll live?” Wyatt asks, fingers clenched around the hat in his hands.

“Maybe,” the doctor says, counting the money that Wyatt’s given him. “For a while longer, anyhow. Until summer, I’d wager, or maybe even to next winter if he’s lucky. Unless you go dragging him up into those mountains again, of course. You do that, and he’s lucky if he makes it ‘til supper.”

“I won’t,” Wyatt vows.

xxx

_“Wyatt never spoke of Jack again, but I know he was the one that haunted him the most.”_

xxx

Wyatt puts a bullet in Jack’s head.

He does it for a school teacher with a loud and bright laugh, and for countless other girls who’d once been filled with hope and dreams. He does it because he believes in justice, but also, he admits to himself if to no one else, because he’s filled to the brim with wrath and grief and regret. He does it because he’s come to think of himself as the weapon of God.

But most of all, he does it because of a promise, made to and by his best friend.

**the end**


End file.
